The combined effect of this summer's World Cup and England's bid to hold the 2018 tournament has put football firmly in the spotlight. But there is a darker side to the prospect of so many highly charged football matches – they have long been known as a peak time for incidents of domestic violence.

A 2006 Home Office report into the problem found that football matches, alcohol consumption and domestic violence regularly combined to the detriment of thousands of women and advised police to be more aware of the connection when planning policing around World Cup matches.

In Scotland, which has long had higher rates of domestic abuse generally than the rest of the UK, one police force has taken this advice to its limit. Strathclyde – which deals with roughly half of all reported crime in Scotland – has established a domestic abuse task force and moved away from a victim-centred approach to an increasingly preventative focus. After one year in which there were 11 domestic homicides within the force's area, the importance of prevention seems evident.

I have never spoken to a senior officer with such a refreshing commitment to tackling domestic violence as Detective Chief Inspector Peter McPike. He has combined a joined-up approach from investigating murders to lead a domestic abuse response team with crime scene, sexual violence, family liaison and child witness-handling skills. The team works with local housing authorities and other non-police agencies to gather community-led intelligence about perpetrators of domestic violence, as well as its own surveillance. So far they appear to have halved the domestic homicide rate – which was down to six last year.

Finding new ways to reverse the historic failure of the authorities to protect women from domestic violence is obviously to be encouraged. But there is one aspect to Strathclyde's work which is deeply troubling.

McPike calls this "predictive analysis", and essentially it involves identifying events, such as Rangers matches, when domestic violence levels tend to peak, the individuals likely to commit acts of violence at those times, and then showing up at their homes.

"If we think it's appropriate, we might knock on the person's door and … give them a warning and say 'we know you've done this before, don't do it,'" McPike said. "Or if we find these individuals are wanted for other criminality – outstanding matters, warrants or breaches of bail conditions –we will prioritise those pieces of work."

"There is a big preventative side to this work, as well as a proactive intelligence-lead response in task force work," he added.

McPike describes this technique as effective and I believe him. But anyone who has seen the film Minority Report and its fictional "precrime department" will be aware how dangerous it is for the state to sanction the arrest of people before they have actually committed an offence.

In the film, the presumption of innocence is abandoned as police arrest people for future offences and reduce crime rates by 90%.

In the film, three psychics enabled a police force to arrest people for "future crimes", reducing crimes rates by 90%. Apparently abandoning the presumption of innocence, the combined effect of this statistic the prevailing, pro-precrime view in the film is that "in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark."

But there is never a happy ending when fundamental principles of justice are abandoned – even if the cause is a laudable one – and the film ends with all precrime convicts being released. It always seemed like an compelling fantasy to me, but in Scotland there may be a real-life lesson there.